Degas Dancers: Eye and Camera will bring together 75 works comprising paintings, photography, pastel drawings and sculpture. It will hail him as an artist ahead of his time, whose work incorporated and was influenced by early film-making and photography.

"As everybody knows, Degas is the artist most associated with dance. But, rather surprisingly, there has never been an exhibition in Britain devoted exclusively to Degas' dancers," said curator Ann Dumas.

"I think we have a very interesting and unusual and fresh approach to this subject. I hope it will undermine the idea that Degas was just a painter of pretty ballet dancers. In fact, he was an extremely radical artist of his time.

"He had a very experimental way of working that has never been fully explored. I think it will make for a very interesting and revelatory exhibition."

The exhibition will include the Little Dancer sculpture of a 14-year-old girl alongside the artist's preparatory drawings, which were done from different angles and create the impression of the subject turning 360 degrees.

His work will be displayed alongside that of Eadweard Muybridge, the 19th century photographer, and Auguste and Louise Lumière, the French film-makers, all of whom had an influence on Degas.

The show, which runs from September 17 - December 11 next year, is one of the highlights of the Royal Academy's 2011 programme.

There will also be exhibitions of 20th century Hungarian photography, the drawings of Jean-Antoine Watteau and a show devoted to modern British sculpture that includes work by Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Anthony Caro and Damien Hirst.